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You got it? Good. I could have ordered it from Amazon as well, rather than from local online megastore which is late with it for a week. Even the R1 briefcase would be about 10 bucks cheaper from US Amazon than this. I'll be wiser next time. Enjoy the stuff!

I plan to get the Less Cheap version myself, if only so I can watch one of the versions with VO and compare, because I've only ever seen Director's Cut. And on Amazon it's about as cheap as the Cheap version would be in a store. I also went to my college's bookstore randomly the other day and, out of sheer luck, found a copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep- apparently it's a reprint in anticipation of the Final Cut.

Awesome! The Philip K. Dick story differs a lot from what actually ended up in Blade Runner, though.

The movie seems to have Neuromancer as a more obvious inspiration, and I'd tend to say that Blade Runner's got quite a bit of style, but not as much substance. Those director's cuts might swerve my opinion a bit, though, if I ever manage to get them.

Edit: Just realised that Blade Runner (1982) came out before Neuromancer (1984), though both of them share similar influences.

Getting back to the original topic (Alien films), has anyone been following AvP2? I haven't, and I'm not really sure what to expect. AvP1 (the film) was drivel. So it would be almost impossible not to make a better movie, but then that's not saying much

The signs aren't looking great tho. They're playing up the amount of gore, and that they got themselves an R-rating. Well, whoopee-do. Gore does not equal suspense or fear. Throwing ketchup around liberally is not going to make this great. So I hope they have done some work on the script and the characters.

So what did you think of it? Has the image quality been improved from the kind-of-lousy previous Director's Cut DVD? And have they fixed the '6 replicants, 1 dies, that leaves 4' error?

To be perfectly honest, I can't really make comparisons since I never got and watched the Director's Cut DVD - precisely because I was holding out for this box set (or rather, any kind of boxset - I remember there being rumours of a 3-disc set at some point). My 'home cinema' system isn't that thrilling either (bog-standard TV + Xbox), so bad image quality doesn't tend to be that noticeable. All I can say is it looks damn good!

This review will probably give you a better idea of what's in the box.

Anyway, on-topic, I just rented the Alien 3 DVD off Amazon, so I'll see how the 'Director's Cut' turns out, and whether it's worth a purchase.

I just watched Alien Resurrection for the first time in like 4 years. Holy Christ, it's even worse than I remembered.

First off, I seriously do not care what anyone says. Joss Whedon is a hack who writes everything like it's a comic book. He never should have been allowed near the Alien franchise. He ruined it long before Paul motherfucking Anderson was even an apple in the Internet Hate Machine's eye. I hope he dies in a fire for his terrible script. It has a few good parts, but it escalates far too early and there's zero buildup of suspense.

The directing? Never let a Frenchman direct a horror movie. The way Jeunet likes to zoom in on people's faces at an odd angle is especially annoying, and makes it feel like some horrible college film thesis. The tone he tries to set is constantly changing and it's annoying- wait it's a surreal comedy, no wait now it's a horror flick, no wait now it's action, no wait now it's a comedy again, no wait Jeunet's a prick. And what was with the subtle lesbian undertones?

That said, I really liked the setting. In a way, it was like a dark version of the Nostromo. But I wasn't happy with the alien hive. The hive in Aliens was smooth, almost skeletal in a sense. The hive in Alien Resurrection reminded me of those horrible tentacle rape .gifs you used to see back in 1999. It didn't help that Ripley basically disappears into that writhing mass of wrong.

Why did the aliens all have to fucking breathe steam? They never did before. These things don't breathe, period. They're biomechanical constructs created by the Space Jockey race as a weapon of war. Also, the sequence where the alien pounds on the button and freezes the guard would have been a lot less fucking stupid if the alien had used his HAND and not his inner jaw. The inner jaw is for puncturing skulls, not basic object manipulation. And the so-called newborn? What a horrid concept done in a horrible way. The whole thing felt tacked on. The scene in the nest where the scientist is mumbling about how the queen took on a secondary reproduction scene would've been a lot better if he hadn't taken on the ridiculous "THIS IS RIPLEY'S GIFT TO HER" blah blah horseshit. If he had just kept muttering on in scientific terms, that would've been different, but no, he actually fucking says "you are a beautiful beautiful butterfly." I puked in my mouth a little.

I can't decide which is worse: Joss Whedon's fetish for ensemble casts or the fact that the members of said casts all sound the same. The worst thing was, the only characters worth remembering in Alien Resurrection were the ones who survived all the way to the end. At least it was interesting seeing Gary Dourdan from before he was cool.

This movie could have been so much better with: a different script, a different director, maybe a different/reduced cast, a different plot, and basically was not this movie. And no fucking newborn.

I can't even REMEMBER Alien Res. Probably blocking it out, lol. What was the plot again?

To answer your question: laughable.

They find some DNA which somehow lets them clone Ripley with the alien Queen inside her. (Now would be a good time for a /facepalm smiley, if there was one). If they wanted alien DNA, it was scattered all over Fury-161 (the A3 prison), and they could have taken it then.

Even if the DNA for the queen was not present in drone DNA, it still doesn't explain how a single DNA strand could recreate two organisms... one within the other... Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you mix two sets of DNA together, either it doesn't work at all, or you end up with a fusion of both.

If it were possible to separate Ripley's DNA from the queen DNA, then why bring Ripley back?

Ugh, it's senseless trying to explain the plot in rational terms. Some Hollywood type just sat down and said "I know, we'll clone them! Ripley and the queen inside her! LOL, DNA!!!" I suspect there is very little science in this science fiction.

Even if the DNA for the queen was not present in drone DNA, it still doesn't explain how a single DNA strand could recreate two organisms... one within the other... Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you mix two sets of DNA together, either it doesn't work

Good point. The movie also doesn't explain why new, cloned Ripley has all the memories of old Ripley. Memories are not stored in DNA...